The Beetles of Algara
by Anonymaustrap
Summary: A collapse at the Algara Dilithium Mine reveals a centuries old secret that the small team of miners stationed there must contend with, or risk losing the mine entirely.


Note:

As part of the Green room challenge, this is to complete the story and then polish later. This is extremely unpolished, though I did make ever effort to make it readable, even if there is the occasional name change or plot hole. This is a work in progress.

Thank you in advance for reviewing. I am hoping to be stretching the boundaries of the hypnosis theme in the green room challenge.

* * *

"Hey Pirate, the horta are getting antsy about sector A15. They think its unstable. Can you take a look?"

I sighed. My name is Jason. Pirate was the nickname Sparks, also known as Altoth – a Bolian who gave *everyone* nicknames until it became tradition - had given me because I lost an eye to a dilithium fragment about a year ago, and with medical resources needed for those on the front lines, I went with an ocular implant instead of a regrown eye. It took maybe a week for Sparks to start calling me Pirate, and the name would have died out if Doc, our medic and chief operator, stuck with it with the that famous Tellarite stubbornness. Yes, our medical technician was called Doc. Algara mining hadn't picked us for our ability to come up with witty nicknames.

Star ships may cross the galaxy faster than light, and replicators produce wonderfully black coffee on command, but this was all still powered by digging holes in the ground. That's not to say that mining had not come a long way. M-Drills and sophisticated scanners replaced hydraulics and digging and praying for that big strike. Structural replicators and the horta had made cave-ins and collapses almost extinct. Also gone were the big mining camps. Algara IV mining operations loaded over a thousand tons of top grade dilithium a month with five humans and almost a dozen horta – along with a 25 million tons of refining equipment. An M-Drill was handy. Horta were indispensable. As we told any new minors that did a tour here – "Stick with the horta, they'll keep you out of trouble."

I approached low, rocky rise the Horta had indicated as a safe place to observe the collapse. They horta were not immune to the name game, and the deep green sheen on this one had earned it the name Jade.

"What do you think, Jade? Resonance from the dilithium below?"

"Negative, One-eyed robber. Feldspar insists they felt rockshake before."

"We really need to get your translator updated." I said with a sigh, just as I felt a light rumble and in the distance a section of rock fell in on itself.

I would have heard the collapse at A15 if Alpha site had any atmosphere. Instead, the collapse had been completely silent, except for the deep resonance of the lightly shaking ground reaching my eardrums, muffled and deep. In the lower gravity, dust and grit traveled quickly, spreading out like a wave, and showering my face plate. Even though the rumble and motion had long ended, I waited for Jade's report. "The sinkhole is 15 meters across at its widest point. The edge seems reasonably stable. Mostly igneous rock, and at least a meter thick. Do not place more than a thousand kilos per square meter within five meters of the edge though. Below is a cavern. It is large. Jaspar and Shist are finding the edges and will create access tunnels, if the way seems stable. I will let you consult your tricorder to confirm."

Over the comm channel, I heard Sparks chuckle. Yeah, that joke never got old. Shist never seemed to be bothered by the moniker, despite Doc's most blatant fresher references. I'd tried explaining it to Jade one day. It didn't translate well at all. Humans in Starfleet tried to explain great philosophers like Socrates and Voltaire. I was better off trying to explain poop jokes.

My tricorder confirmed what Jade already knew and we approached the site, but despite the horta's confidence I felt wary. The sinkhole was a jagged gash, longer than it was wide. My light cut through the dusty gloom. The dust would take days to settle in the lower gravity. Between the dust and the enormity of the cavern, My light didn't reach the other side.

"Jasper has found an edge to the cavern and is starting an entry that bipeds can use. The cavern is a small network, a little over a kilometer across and 1.4 kilometers at its widest point. Feldspar will burn a perimeter into the surface rock to help map it. I feel vibrations that are more than residual from the collapse. Something below is causing a song."

I looked over at the horta. It was a human gesture, when we look at someone's face when we hear something odd. But it was like looking at the side of a low mound of rock. "Come again? I think the universal translator glitched again."

"It did not. The vibration in the rock has a pattern, and is pleasant." The translator did a horrible job of translating inflection, but for a moment, I thought maybe I got a sense of wonder from the Horta.

Feldspar was done marking a perimeter in less than an hour. The Horta were communicating to each other excitedly. I'd never seen them so animated. They were curious enough and friendly – at least by human terms, but day to day chatter wasn't normally in their makeup. Jade would ask how I was doing and say good morning, but Jade did that to make the biped feel better, not from a desire to communicate. Their lives were rock and crystal.

The Horta made tunnels that were angled and large enough for the non-horta crew. We took a full sensor suite with us – mostly mining equipment. A third of the way down, our seismic sensors could pick up the vibration as well.

"Digs, are you picking that up?" Digs was naturally our chief geologist.

Safely in the Hub, Digs replied. "Sure can. Damned if I can make sense of it, though."

Can you run this through spectral analysis, Digs?"

"I'm ahead of you."

Doc cut in. "Hurry it up. We can't lose production. The war won't power itself you know. We should switch nodes and leave away team stuff for Starfleet."

"C'mon Doc. This sure beats watching a belt of rock go by. This isn't just some random vibration, this might be some kind of signal."

Sparks, had left Hub and was coming out to meet me. "And you're armed with…"

"Four horta." I replied. Sparks said nothing.

Digs said. "I can amplify the vibration and give you a listen."

"Lay it on me. Lets see if I can dance to it."

Digs piped it to my suit. If it was reflective of the Horta taste in music, I'd rather listen to Tellarite Opera. But it was a pattern, and a complex one.

Near the end of the tunnel, dust from the collapse slowly settled, and I wiped off my faceplate.

Jade reported. "I can feel it very clearly here. It is…" I couldn't tell whether it was Jade or the translator that struggled with the word. "pleasant." Through the entrance to the cavern I could see massive pillars of dilithium, reflecting the light from the opening above and reflecting to the myriad of other crystals, making the entire cavern shimmer in purples, yellows and the occasional green. A Nagus' fortune of dilithium. The ground itself seemed to shimmer from the light, until I looked again, and realized it was movement.

"Jade…" I said carefully in warning.

"I know. They are making the song." Jade said, sliding across the ground closer, the edges of the tunnel still steaming from the horta's acids. I felt a nudge at my calf and looked back at Feldspar, who followed Jade. I stepped carefully over the still steaming tunnel wall, and approached the motion carefully.

"Digs, I see movement ahead, the horta are checking it out."

"Movement?"

The patch of movement was actually patches. My first word when I saw them was. "Beetles." But of course that was impossible. Alpha Site had no atmosphere, but sure enough, they looked like beetles.

I was joined by Sparks, lumbering in his heavy EV suit along with M-Drill harness, pointing the drill about warily.

"I think the coast is clear, Sparks."

"You forget we're at war, Pirate?" He asked with a wary bravado.

"The dilithium surrendered." I add extra sarcasm because Sparks can be kind of dense.

Sparks looked at the ground, the lights on his helmet playing across the back of the beetles. They formed continually rotating circular mass that slowly shifted laterally across the ground. "What the heck are those?"

"Dunno yet. Dang it!" My eye glitched as I tried to get a better look at them, I promised myself to have Trips take a look at it later. I broke out my tricorder and gave the beetles a read. They were small, but dense. The tricorder couldn't get an image of their internals, their bodies as cold as the surrounding rocks.

"Living?" Sparks asked? I shook my head. "Mechanical?" I shook my head again. They were silicate, like the horta, but didn't have any measurable biologics.

"Fibonacci" I heard Digs say over coms.

I didn't respond and just watching the continual turning motion of the beetles, each ring moving slightly different than the others, either faster, or slower, one direction or the next. Sparks asked asked "Fibowha?"

"I'm looking at your suit's feed." Digs said, and realized with my silence that wasn't enough of an explanation. "Look at the bugs. One surrounded by two, surrounded by three, surrounded by five, then eight, then thirteen."

"Fibonacci sequence" I said, suddenly realizing what he meant.

"Can you get one of those beetles in a sample canister?" Digs asked.

I nudged Sparks. He looked at me. "What?"

"You got the duragloves on, Captain M-Drill." I un-clipped a sample pack from my belt and opened the canister.

We approached a moving mass from the lee side and Sparks reached down cautiously, and snatched a scintillating beetle from the edge.

The outer ring of the mass exploded away from the rest, scattering. Sparks yelped, almost dropping the one in his hand as those that remained in the outer ring moved toward him. I stepped back, slowly at first, then faster. He stomped down a couple times, but in his panic missed as the single beetles peeled away, then coalesced into their own group. Once oriented, they began their own rotation, with each row moving at a different pace, or even opposite of the rings around it. Even so, these groups moved as one. The smaller mass began its own circling as the original group continued their rotation.

I laughed at Sparks, studying the beetle in the sample pack. "Lets get back to the Hub."

Over the general channel, I heard Trip say, "This is amazing." And I looked over and saw him just a dozen or so meters back, cautiously approaching the swirling groups of beetles. Their colors reflected in the face-plate of his EV suit as he stared at them. I looked from the reflection to the actual groups, just watching the colors until my eye glitched and I realized we'd been staring at them for almost twenty minutes without making a sound. Almost all the horta were here too, quietly observing the rotating groups of beetles they glided across the rocky cavern floor, engulfing dilithium crystals.

"Guys, c'mon, we gotta get moving before Doc goes warp 11, and makes us work overtime to make up for the lost production."

We contacted Starfleet, but research wasn't their top priority, with the Undine tearing into unprotected colonies. Just last week we'd heard Earth Space Dock had been destroyed. Starfleet took a quick look at the data, and since we didn't feel we were in any particular danger, said they would send someone when they could.

Starfleet might not have been all that interested, but everyone else sure was. It was all that Sparks, Trip, and Digs could talk about over dinner. Even threats of working extra shifts to make up the lost time didn't deter them, and they brainstormed how to best study them.

Doc says, "We could use high intensity sonics to drive them off the dilithium."

"Drive them off?" Digs asked incredulously. "We just found them. This could be the find of the year! Besides, its not like there aren't other rich nodes to mine. We can leave that one be for a bit, cant' we?"

Doc looked unconvinced, but simply shrugged.

In our free time, our mining team became a science team, powered by raktajeno. I'd never seen Sparks, Trip, or Diggs so engaged in anything, and the horta were eager to provide what they knew. Even Doc, who was always worried about production and quotas was pleased as it kept the team tight and they were motivated to get their work done to get back to the mysterious cavern.

The beetles were a silicate life form and we knew rocks. The groups of beetles, which we found ourselves calling colonies, arranged themselves around a central beetle – but as we could tell the central beetle wasn't any kind of queen or have any special status. The other beetles formed concentric circles in a complete Fibonacci sequence. New or lost beetles caused the outermost layer to reform into one or more smaller colonies. While the colonies seemed aware of each other's' presence, but they didn't complete in over the dilithium crystals. Actually, all the colonies seemed to be orchestrated into some kind of coordinated whole. Sometimes, smaller colonies would join larger ones when they formed a complete sequence and aside from maintaining this mathematical balance, they moved dilithium.

The process took place over several hours. One or more colonies would drift over to a diltihium spire and cover it, so that the column was covered in shimmering, turning beetles. Over time, they would nibble at the dilithium and wear it down so that the column almost seemed to melt under the scintillating carpet of beetles, a magicians disappearing act that when the carpet was removed, the column was never there.

Then the colony, stuffed to the mandibles with dilithium, moved to another location and would climb on top of each other, spiraling to a thick column of two or three meters, depending on the height of the original column. They would then slowly disgorge the column they had nibbled apart swirling down to reveal the newly formed column of dilithium crystal, identical to the molecular level.

It was a spectacle we watched over and over. Drifting into a reverie as they moved, trying to catch more detail of the swirling mass until a glitch in the implant would cause me to lose concentration. Sometimes that thing was more trouble than it was worth, and it drove me to finally make time with Doc to see about getting it fixed.

Doc checked out the visor in the lab. She wasn't really a doc, but had been a combat medic in Starfleet. "I think the color patterns are causes a feedback loop in the ocular processing. Without better equipment from Argala, I'm guessing. I'll put the order in tonight."

"But Doc, will I ever be able to play piano again?"

She laughed. She liked the old joked the best. She showed me on the beetles we'd gathered. They appeared to be carved out of crystal themselves, comprised of sharp angles instead of curves. They were extremely hard, and brittle. Sparks was lucky to have missed stomping on one. The resulting shards could have pieced his EV suit. The legs were segmented and ended in slightly rounded points. A strong light could shine right through them, and then the beetle appeared to have been made out of glass, with no organs or bones to be seen. The mandibles were very sharp, but extremely shallow, almost more like a rasp than a cutter. "Harmless unless they mistake you for a growth of dilithium."

"Only to get spit up again in a different location. I'm not sure I'd survive the experience. How's the samples."

"Inert as all the others. I can't really say they're dead, because I can't even tell if they're alive. But they stop moving, even when we take a complete Fibonacci set.

Until we learn more, I don't want to take any others. That, and our production numbers are dropping."

"Bad?"

"Bad enough that Starfleet is concerned, because while our production is down, the horta's production has dropped off completely."

I winced. "The sure like listening to that 'song' or whatever it is, but they're usually annoyed with us for being behind them."

"I know. I talked to Jade about it, but Jade …well Jade acted like nothing was wrong. So Starfleet wants to send some sort of medical team to figure out if they're sick or anything."

"Are they sick?" I asked.

Doc shook her head. "Not that I can tell. But look what I found out about the colonies tearing down and reassembling those dilithium." She pressed a button on a console, and a holographic display overlayed a few towers, then more and more.

"There's a pattern." Doc explained. "I aged the towers based on their crystalline structure and found that there are over a hundred towers in a sequence, getting built, and then eventually torn down to get rebuilt. The entire process takes about a decade to complete."

"Over a hundred?" I asked, dumbfounded.

"One hundred sixty seven, to be exact." Doc said, clearly pleased with her sleuthing. "I'm reasonably sure I can predict which tower they'll go to next. I'm going to test it out next watch."

"I thought you had ops next watch."

"I've got some personal time saved up. I'm going to use it and get out to the cavern."

"What about the production?"

"What about it? I'll let Starfleet sort it out."

It was all we talked about. The beetles, the colonies, how they moved. I went out on breaks to see how everyone was doing. There was bickering among us and the horta as to who had to take mine watches. I'd volunteer to keep everyone from arguing and as much as I liked watching the beetles, my implant would glitch and wreck it. Everyone seemed to have a level of understanding about these beetles I couldn't comprehend, and over dinner they'd try to explain, in almost reverent tones why the find was so important.

"Its like a message they are sending, in the way they reconfigure the dilithium spires." Diggs explained. The entire process is a message and I feel like I almost get that message."

"What are they trying to say?"

"I don't know! That's the frustrating part, but I'm close, I'm sure of it. If I can study them a bit longer, I think I can work it through the universal translator."

"You can't even get that to work right for the horta. It thinks they're calling the vibration a song."

"What do you mean?" Trip looked at me with an odd expression. "It is."

Not long after we stopped talking. Our last meal together was completely nonverbal, my attempts to talk about the velocity championships brushed off with noncommittal grunts and nods.

I was woken out of my sleep by the sudden silence of the mine shutting down. I slid out of bed, and checked the console. With no one at the mining stations, the mine had automatically halted refining and sent a subspace general distress call. Everyone was out, even Doc. Their EV suits were gone. I tried hailing them – Trip, Sparks, Digs and Doc. Only Trip responded, but his utterances – short, atonal barks. They barely sounded like him, and the universal translator simply whispered "untranslatatable".

I suited up in the sole remaining EV suit, and headed to the cavern.

They were all there. The horta – all of them, formed a circle around the swirling masses of beetles – they were motionless. I found Jade in the circle and knealt by the motionless lump.

"Jade?"

I almost reached out and touched the dull green carapace, but stopped, and used my tricorder instead. At least the horta was still alive, but what it was doing – that was beyond me.

Diggs, Doc, and Sparks were further in, their EV suits dark, slouched, their heads bent toward the beetle colonies. Trip knelt by a column of dilithium, the occasional flare from the pulse drill in his hand as he shaved at the column, a mound of flakes growing between his kneels. Occasionally he'd make that odd, barking sound.

"Trip? TRIP! Daniel!"

Nothing. I didn't exist to them.

I sighed, looking out over the colonies, doing the same dance they'd done for thousands of years. As I looked over the shifting, swirling carapaces, I lost myself for a moment in the shift of color and shape, feeling for a moment weak and drowsy, my focus drifting away so they were no longer beetles, but a swirling mass of shape and color, and I felt a tug to follow them. It seemed easy.

A burst of static from my visor eye pulled me to groggy sensibility, and I looked away. I didn't want to look away. I wanted to see that color again, to follow that swirling motion, to build. I fought the urge to look again as I reached out for Diggs' shoulder. I pulled and he jerked back roughly. I tried again, and the yank back was stronger. I saw Doc and Sparks turn toward me, and a chill made me step back. The Universal translator might not be working, but their message was clear, and I backed out of the cavern, watching them carefully.

A Starship had picked up the hail from the mine when it went into shutdown mode. This is the USS Tyee responding to a distress call from Argala Mine 824. Do you read?"

I was never so happy to communicate with someone who didn't want to just talk about beetles. The coms officer quickly put me in touch with the science officer – a very serious looking Betazoid, her hair in an efficient blond bob. I half expected her to think my story was some sort of cover up for a mine team just running off to Risa.

"The bad news, Mr. Wezel, is that the Tyee is a cadet training ship. We're not especially well armed or equipped. But, we might be able to help. How long can your EV suits cycle atmosphere?"

I scowled at beign called Mr. Wezel. "Jason'll do. 24 hours."

"Just sit tight. I'll review your data."

She hailed the mine in a couple hours.

"What took you so long?"

Her expression barely registered the joke, but at least she didn't answer.

But she did tell me what needed to be done.

"Wait, who are you?"

"Lieutenant Sri."

"Any nicknames?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, I figure the person who's going to save our mine should have one."

"Do you have a nickname?"

"Pirate."

She frowned, clearly not amused at the reference. "I suppose that will have to do, because I'm not going to save your station. You are."

I'm no hero, but I did have a job to do and didn't want to let my fellows down. I returned to the cavern with an M-Drill on full charge with the complete extractor package, and found the pillar that based on Doc's predictions was next to be relocated. No one interfered with me setting up the drill or the extractor and I was careful to stay out of the beetles path.

Within minutes, the drill and extractor had done its work. The crystal bloom was gone, transferred down the extractor to the refining hold. I watched the colony that would have torn it down approach the spot, swirl around it, and then simply stop. In that moment all the colonies stopped.

Digg's light came on, while Trip and the others moved slowly about.

"Uh, does anyone remember coming here?"

"Later." I said. "Lets get back to the hub. Jade, are you and the rest able to get back?"

"Yes, I am able, one-eyed robber. Did I fall asleep? I remember dreaming of a song."

* * *

"Two days." The Betazoid said, putting her gloves back on. Her uniform said Starfleet sciences. She'd telepathically examined each of us, myself included. "There's no danamge, but clearly for the last couple days, everyone but you has been under very intense hypnosis."

"Except me." I said with a little pride.

She nodded. "Yes. Except you. Though if your ocular implant had been operating properly, you might have been affected as well. You're quite lucky that the chromoneural interface was improperly set. Our EMH should be able to re-calibrate it, and I'll make sure she has the necessary filters to prevent their patterns from affecting you."

"Why? They're stopped, right?"

"They were moving again when we sent a team in. "

"Are they alright?"

"We beamed them out. They were a little disoriented, but our first officer is a Vulcan and has a disciplined mind. Our next team was better prepared. I did achieve a limited kind of telepathic contact with them. They do not have any hostile intent or purpose."

I looked at her in a new light, and decided her nickname was Spooky. "Oh. Well, what did they want?"

"They don't have desire, only purpose. Beyond that, their …mind…if you can even call it that was too alien to decipher. I'm not even sure if they are really a life form, and not some kind of sophisticated biosilicate algorithm."

"I think you just leapfrogged all my science classes."

"That may be, but I think you might have actually helped them. They had been in that pattern of construction for a very long time. You broke the loop. It remains to be seen if they somehow moved into a previous moment in their program or forward." She shrugged.

"What, the bugs are enacting some kind of program?"

"Its only a theory, combined with what Ms. Dorn's data."

"Ms. Dorn?"

"Doc."

"Oh. But if those beetles were part of some kind of program, Wouldn't it have been easier to just give the problem to a real computer?"

"That would depend on the problem you were trying to solve." She said enigmatically.

"So were they in some kind of glitch or infinite loop?"

Lt. Sri shrugged as she packed her medical supplies. "I don't know exactly. It may have been all precisely part of their program."

"Until some outside event like us broke it."

"It is possible that we're not outside the algorithm at all. It could have been waiting for us." She said.

I tried to follow that, and stopped when my head started hurting.


End file.
